


love is an unlocked door

by Heronfem



Series: Grace Notes [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Background Poly, Geralt of Rivia is a little shit, Humor, Minor Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Multi, Rating for Language, sex mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25064905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: As payment for work, Geralt gets a magicked key that opens any door to the room that whoever he most wants to see is in.Shenanigans ensue, because of course they do.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Grace Notes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822675
Comments: 42
Kudos: 419
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #003





	love is an unlocked door

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says, doing his level best not to yell. “You what.” 

The mage beams at him. “I lied about having the 50 orens,” he says brightly, as if this is supposed to somehow magically make Geralt not want to strangle him, violently, several times over. “But I do have something better.” 

Geralt drops the wyvern head on the mages desk, about ten seconds away from becoming a ball of rage incarnate. The mage, wisely seeing this, jerks a necklace out from his robes and thrusts it at him. He’s still smiling, but it’s a little more strained as the wyvern starts oozing onto his paperwork. 

With a glower, Geralt snatches the necklace to look at it. It’s a skeleton key of fine chased silver on a silver chain, and there’s a rather nice sized pearl hanging next to it. “What’s this?” 

“This,” the man says eagerly, “is a key.” 

The look Geralt gives him could have, and has previously, blistered paint. The mage wilts. 

“Insert it into any lock and open the door to go to the person you want to see most in that moment,” he says hastily. “So long as they’re in a room that can be entered by a door, you can go to them! If the person you most want isn’t in a room, it’ll take you to the second most wanted, and so on.” 

That is… genuinely probably better than the 50 orens, actually, but Geralt isn’t actually going to say that to this asshole, so he just grunts and loops it around his neck. “Guessing it’s a one-way kind of thing?” 

“Yes,” the man says, nodding eagerly. “There’s no limits on how many times it can be used, but you won’t be able to go back to where you came from if you go through the door.” 

“Got it. Any side effects?” 

“Vertigo, altitude sickness, that’s about it,” the mage says, looking very relieved that Geralt has stopped looking about to murder him. “Are… are we square?” 

“Fine,” Geralt snaps, and stalks out of the room to head directly to the inn and his bath. 

Jaskier, predictably, is not in their room when Geralt arrives, having taken up conversation with a very pretty barmaid just before Geralt headed out. Geralt takes this time of silence to scrub himself violently and soak, and definitely not miss hands in his hair in the slightest. Once he’s clean he gets changed and throws himself on the bed, the silver key clinking merrily against his medallion as he buries his face in the pillows and thinks longing thoughts about just sleeping and meditating for a week- 

The door bangs open.

“GERALT WE NEED TO LEAVE TOWN.” 

Geralt heaves a sigh into the pillow and rolls over to face the ceiling. “Now what?” he asks as Jaskier starts frantically chucking their things into bags. 

“I might have started a small riot in the town square because I didn’t realize that the very lovely and charming and pretty barmaid that I was spending time with already had three boyfriends who didn’t know about each other, let’s GO,” Jaskier rattles off, and Geralt can’t quite keep from smiling. 

Jaskier is a menace, but at least he got his bath in before it was time to skip town. 

“Fine,” he says, and leaves enough coin to cover the room as they casually take off, and take the long way around the square to get Roach from the stable and head out. 

After that, it’s a long while before they’re anywhere with doors to put a key in, which is just fine by Geralt’s standards. It’s a nice, leisurely pace they’re at, eating up a swath of the continent and cutting through a million and one tiny contracts while enjoying the good weather of summer. Jaskier seems to be having a good time too, for all he complains about the lack of cozy accommodations, but usually they can find a comfortable meadow to sleep in and that keeps him from too much irritation. 

They finally arrive in a town large enough to be worth a week’s stay, and Jaskier wheedles them rooms while Geralt sits down and reads up on the local nuisances. There’s the eternal drowner contracts, what sounds like a possible Black Fiend, at least one griffin on the very edge of town, and a truly ridiculous amount of wraiths. 

Geralt takes all the notices, and is pleased to find that the alderman is a businesslike woman with no particular dislike for Witchers and a deep purse. With Jaskier installed in a tavern to sing for their supper, Geralt hikes his swords onto his back and heads off to go and do his own job. The griffin is tackled first, and he handles two of the eight (eight, for fucks sake) drowners on his way back. It’s a good day. 

He finally breaks when he gets to the wraiths. 

There’s a pack of them haunting an old house on the edge of town, and he spends a very annoying afternoon handling 5 of the 18 (EIGHTEEN). By the time he’s done he’s spitting curses of annoyance and sorely wishing there were more Witchers around to complain at and that he didn’t have to walk all the way back to the damn tavern on the other side of town. When he finishes, standing in what was once a very nice dining room, he glances at the door and spots a keyhole. 

He glares at it. 

“I shouldn’t,” he tells the house. 

The house does not care, and really, Geralt doesn’t either. He wants to go to Jaskier and a bath, and Jaskier is supposed to be in a room with a door, so he takes the key from his neck and shoves it in the lock to turn. It turns easily, and Geralt pulls open the door. There’s a vaguely watery outline of a room beyond what looks like netting, so he pushes through and- 

Lambert drops his sword, gaping at him as Geralt steps through the door to what looks like a very fancy bedroom, judging by the massive four poster bed taking up most of it. Lambert and another Witcher, this one with a Cat medallion on, are currently sitting on ornate chairs by the fire and down to their shirtsleeves. The Cat is very handsome indeed, and has a brace of knives out by the time Geralt finishes stepping into the room.

“Huh,” Geralt says as a lot of things come into focus about Lambert’s current caginess about his travels. “Didn’t expect that.” 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Lambert demands, eyes wide. “Geralt, how the fuck are you here?” 

“Magic,” Geralt says simply, looking at the equally startled Cat. “Introduce me to your boyfriend.” 

“I- wha- no!” Lambert rockets to his feet, still staring. “Aiden’s not my boyfriend, anyway!” 

“Husband, then?” Geralt asks, because he’s in a good mood now and teasing Lambert is always fun. “Did I miss the invitation to the handfasting? I’m sorry if I did.” 

Lambert makes a noise of incandescent fury and alarm, and the Cat breaks into peals of hysterical cackling laughter. Lambert whacks him upside the head, which just makes him laugh harder, and rounds back to Geralt. “ _How are you here_.” 

“I told you, magic.” Geralt looks back at the door, which thankfully has a lock. Well, this should work now that he’s seen Lambert. “You should bring him to winter, I’ll deal with Vesemir.” 

He turns the key in the lock and steps through the door to Lambert’s shriek, and arrives in an elegant sitting room full of bookshelves. The light coming through the windows is watery, approaching dark, but the angle is a little different.

Eskel slowly looks up from the book he was reading, and blinks at him. It’s a very nice sitting room, and there’s what looks like a bruxae body cooling on the carpet. Eskel seems unharmed, but it looks like there was a fishbowl that became a tragic casualty of the fight. 

“Huh,” Eskel says, blinking at him. He snaps the book shut. “Hey, Geralt. Some reason you just walked into this house when I wrote you last week a good few hundred miles away?” 

“I missed you, apparently,” Geralt says, feeling a grin light on his face. “Did you know Lambert has a boyfriend?” 

Eskel blinks at him, and visibly decides he’s not going to ask. “I did not.” 

“He seems nice, for a Cat,” Geralt says, because sometimes Lambert needs to be tormented and reminded of his position as baby of the family. “Where are we?” 

Eskel gives him a very long look before saying, “Southeast Temeria.” 

“Oh. I’m heading back to Cidaris,” Geralt says. He walks over to hug Eskel tight, and Eskel carefully hugs him back. “Right, well, better get going. See you later, Eskel.” 

“Sure?” Eskel says, very baffled.

Geralt shoves the key in the lock, feeling very happy indeed, and steps into the tavern he’s staying at with Jaskier without a single person noticing. He tucks the key back around his neck and walks back up to their room with a bit of a smile twitching his lips up. When Jaskier comes back up he’s in a very good mood, and Jaskier eyes him suspiciously before shrugging and pestering him for information about his hunt. 

He’s honestly not sure why he doesn’t tell Jaskier about the key. He knows he probably should, as a just in case precaution, but, well. The idea of surprising him with it is _hilarious_. 

So he doesn’t tell Jaskier about his fun new mini-portal machine, and they carry on with life, and Geralt finishes up his contracts and they get the fuck out of town. Life is good. 

It stays good right up until they wind up in Vallweir and things go just a little bit to shit incredibly fast. 

This time it genuinely isn’t Jaskier’s fault. It’s not even Geralt’s fault. It’s just shitty small minded people being shitty and small minded and wondering, not thinking about Witcher hearing picking them up, if the amount they’ll get for setting up the bard to take the fall for some nonsense the nobleman he’s performing for did will be worth the trouble of getting rid of Geralt by sending him on a hunt at least a day’s ride out of town, and whether they can make it look like Jaskier just left him. 

Geralt has their gear on his back before he can think, and the key is shoving into the lock of their room’s door before he even consciously realizes what he’s doing. 

He steps through the doorway and into a bedchamber, where Jaskier is very undressed and very shackled to the bedposts and looks happy about neither of these things. 

The two of them stare at each other for a long minute. Jaskier’s mouth is open in what can best be described as a gape. Geralt’s eyes finally drift south to the delicate laceworked pillow covering Jaskier for modesty. He blinks at it. 

“Nice pillow.”

“They, uh, wanted to be able to let maids in,” Jaskier says, sounding very confused but also glad to see him. “Geralt, since when can you make portals?” 

“I can’t.” 

Jaskier blinks at him. “Right, well, that explains exactly nothing. The keys are on the sideboard over there, next to the very definitely drugged wine that they tried to get me to drink.” 

Geralt finds the keys and quickly unlocks him, grimacing when he sees the strain marks on Jaskier’s wrists. “I heard someone talking in the tavern, they’re framing you for murder.” 

“Yeah, I caught that bit when the asshole was gloating about it,” Jaskier says, hopping out of the bed and hobbling gingerly over to where his things sit in a boring pile on the floor. Thankfully his lute has been stored in its case, and Geralt scoops it up as Jaskier drags on britches and chemise, not bothering to try and drag on the doublet. “After that mess in Kovir I stopped drinking when at work so they just overpowered me and dragged me over here. Honestly pretty embarrassing.” 

Geralt grunts, helping Jaskier stay steady as he carefully pull his boots on, wincing. “Hurt your ankles?” 

“There was some dragging down the stairs,” Jaskier says, and Geralt growls. “Hush, we need to get out of here sooner than later. Can you portal us out?” 

“Maybe. And it’s not a portal.” 

Well, now is as good a time as any to see if this works. 

Geralt shoves the key in the lock and opens the door into the stables where Roach is kept, pulling Jaskier through and shutting the tack room door behind him. The horses of the stable all stare at them placidly as Jaskier makes a series of high, baffled whines and jogs along after him to collect his tack and his best girl. Roach snorts at them when she spots them, but she lips gently at Jaskier’s shirt and Geralt decides that really, he’s getting very fond of this key that knows that horses are people too. 

Once she’s saddled and good to go, he leads her from the stall and leaves his coin in the payment jar to open the door, ignoring Jaskier’s muttered diatribe on Witchers and secrets and asshole nobles and how his life was truly stupidly unfair. Geralt pauses, looking at the exit door closer. There’s a lock in it. 

Something deep and mischievous inside of him that hasn’t woken since he was running around with Eskel before the Trials wakes with fiendish glee. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier says, sounding very put upon. “Don’t think I don’t see that face you’re pulling. I don’t know what you’re thinking of, but don’t do it, we have so much to live for- AH!” 

Geralt puts the key in the lock, turns it, and grabs Jaskier’s hand to pull him and Roach through the doorway. 

“Hi, Yenn,” he says casually as Roach comes to a halt in Yennefer’s bedroom. Yennefer, lounging on a chaise with what looks like a very smutty romance novel in her hands and dressed in the most comfortable clothes he’s ever seen on her, stares at the three of them in mute horror and fascination. “Can you put us up for two days? Jaskier was being framed for murder.” 

Jaskier groans, tosses his gear on a chair, and buries his face in his hands. “I hate you,” he groans, muffled.

“What,” Yennefer says succinctly, “the fuck.” 

Roach starts chewing on a pillow. Yennefer’s eye twitches. 

In the end, she lets them stay, because of course she does, and even gives Roach a very nice meal of oats and good hay because she’s soft for horses even if she won’t say it, and Geralt is very smug about the whole affair. Yennefer and Jaskier have a good old fashioned barb war at each other over a very good dinner, which he listens to happily, because at this point he can read between the lines and knows the two like to play fight like kittens over silly things. It’s fine. They’ll probably all wind up in bed anyway, or Jaskier and Yennefer will wind up in bed and let him watch because that’s been a thing recently, and Geralt is more than okay with that.

And, when he winds up drinking by the fire as the two practice some new kind of dance that’s popular at court and neither of them have been able to master yet, Geralt decides he really needs to take alternate forms of payment more often. This is the most fun he’s had in years.


End file.
